Welcome! My name is Kate, and I am the boss lady behind Life, Love, and Lettering. I live in Chicago, Illinois, am a mother to the cutest toddler, and survive on coffee and deep dish pizza. My guilty pleasures include oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, The Bachelor, and a nice glass of wine. Oh, and if you couldn't tell by how often I use it, I also have a weird obsession with the Oxford comma.

So how did Life, Love, and Lettering come to be? Here is the long and short of it.

In the fall of 2015, I was a new mom who had recently left her job as a high school English teacher and was in the deep trenches of motherhood. I was also having a bit of an identity crisis. Here I was living a life so completely different than what I had previously known, and I felt a bit lost and like a failure. When I was teaching, my day was scheduled down to the minute. I knew that I took a restroom break everyday at 10:10 AM. I was able to regularly analyze my students' quiz and test data to measure my success as a teacher. Furthermore, my entire identity was almost entirely wrapped up in my job. I worked in a high performing urban charter school, so I didn't have time for other hobbies or interests. There was always more I could be doing for my students, so it was what filled my time. Now, however, I was home with the most unpredictable schedule imaginable, I could barely find time to shower in the day, and I felt like I was making up the mom-thing as I went along. Worst of all, I had no idea what made me "me."

At this point, I knew that I didn't want my entire entity to be in my new job as a mother. So, I decided the healthiest thing for me to do was to take up a few hobbies as a creative outlet. Something for me to do during nap time that would allow me to focus on me. I had always loved to doodle growing up, and it was often the only reason I ever got scolded in class (well, that and chewing gum). So I figured that teaching myself to hand letter was the perfect nap time activity. I decided to commit to practicing this new skill everyday for at least ten minutes during my daughter's nap.

Fast forward a few months, and several of my friends started encouraging me to turn my hobby into an Etsy business. My thought process quickly became, "well, what is there the lose?" So I did it! I opened my shop in May of 2016 and haven't turned back! Life, Love, and Lettering has been such a blessing in my life and has allowed me to pursue this new entrepreneurial adventure!